The winners of the following awards may be eligible to submit their shorts to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Oscar consideration. Synopses are courtesy of the festival. Greater Palm Springs CVB Best of the Festival Award Winner: “Unforgivable” (El Salvador), Directed by Marlén Viñayo. A ruthless hitman for the 18th Street gang serves his sentence inside an evangelical Salvadoran prison, where he is guilty not only of his crimes, but of an unforgivable sin under God and gang: being gay....

“The first time he shared with me something about this story, we were here in New York, and doing press for ‘All About My Mother,’” said Cruz, who in the film forms a fascinating bond, via an erotic twist, with Smit’s character. “He told me a few things about this story that changed, evolved a lot into something else, but that was the root of the story.” Cruz said that “when we were in total lockdown, we did one of our calls, FaceTime, and he told me, ‘Oh, by the way, I took this story out of the drawer and I’m writing it again and I’m thinking about you for the character....

“There are many things we love about this film, including Andrea Riseborough’s fierce and fearless performance,” said Music Box Films’ Brian Andreotti. “Director Amanda Kramer’s bold mise en scene and stylized 1950s iconography combine to give adventurous audiences a highly entertaining musing on gender roles and desire that is both timely and timeless,” “Please Baby Please” is directed by Amanda Kramer, working from a script she co-wrote with Noel David Taylor....

The outfit will aim to develop and produce independent film and television projects from emerging filmmakers and creators, as well as writer-director Raiff’s own work. The first project at Small Ideas will be an undisclosed TV series written, directed, and produced by Raiff, with Quittner also producing. “Cha Cha” was released by Apple TV+ on June 17 but remains in the mix for fall screenplay kudos. Raiff directs, writes, and stars in this low-key comedy about a 22-year-old named Andrew in a post-undergrad slump, and with no clear life path forward....

Needless to say, that’s no easy task for Leroy Logan (John Boyega), who doesn’t exactly find a welcoming crowd when he becomes the sole Black officer in the Metropolitan Police Force circa 1983, and “Red, White and Blue” finds him at constant odds with his idealism. McQueen’s gripping true-life drama compensates for some of its more heavy-handed beats thanks to Boyega’s staggering, career-best performance and the fiery tone that surrounds it at every turn....

“God, I don’t know what it is anymore,” Elswit said last year about the state of his collaboration with Anderson. “It’s like a bad married couple. Unpleasant. I don’t know [if we’ll work together again]. Probably not. You know, it depends on how he feels. I would do it again…I didn’t enjoy myself on ‘Inherent Vice’…It was a combination of me and Paul just not getting along, and I can be as immature as him....

“Rob was impossible to get dialect coaching,” “Devil” director Campos said in an interview with The Insider. “He just didn’t want to do it. He was just adamant about figuring it out on his own. He would be like, ‘I’m gonna do this thing, and that thing, with a little bit of this.’” Campos sent Pattinson the “Devil” script while the actor was in production on the Safdie brothers’ movie “Good Time....